James Delahunty
12 Dec 2005 11:31
Sony BMG will now step back and reconsider its approach to protecting the contents of audio CDs, following over a month of controversy about the Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology in use on million of CDs it shipped. Thomas Hesse, head of Sony BMG's global digital business said the firm will "diligently re-evaluate" how it protects CD audio. He declined to give any specific details but said the company is taking the issue very seriously.
This is all a result of two cases of DRM nightmares for Sony BMG. Firstly, Mark Russinovich unmasked the rootkit techniques that the XCP copy protection in use on some Sony CDs was using to hide itself in the operating system. The DRM made permanent operating system changes and left no way of uninstalling. To make matters worse, hackers and virus writers began to exploit the file hiding abilities of XCP.
Just when that situation was dying down, Sony along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) told consumers about a security flaw with SunnComm's MediaMax DRM, which is also included on millions of CDs the company shipped. Again, to make things worse, a patch that was issued had flaws of its own. A second patch is now being tested by security experts. All in all, the means Sony BMG was using to protect music from piracy just harmed its consumers, its CD sales and its reputation. I think the "re-evaluation" is definitely in order.
Source:
The Register